The Rebel Guard and the Imprisoned Princess
by teamfreewill82
Summary: In which Clarke has yet to turn 18, Bellamy is a guard-in-training, and everything is falling apart but somehow into place. [ONESHOT] [EDITED]


**Disclaimer: I do not own** _ **The 100**_ **or anything pertaining to it except my own writing. I've used a lot of edited lines from both the show and the first book, and I do not own any of them. I got this idea off of Tumblr, not my own mind, unfortunately, but thank you for the inspiration, kind stranger. All the rights for all of the things here go to the rightful owners.**

 **A/N: This one-shot may be easier to read if you've also read at least the first book, but it isn't necessary because if you have any questions, you can feel free to PM me. *smiley**

They had first met in April. She had been in Confinement for ten months at that point, her cell walls scattered with sketches drawn by both herself and Jake. It was her only respite, the only thing that kept her going, the awareness that she had done what she had for her father. He had had to die. The least she could do was spend a few months in solitary confinement. But in July, it would be her birthday. All citizens of the Ark were forced into a fearful anxiety awaiting the day they would turn 18, because it meant you were able to receive Capital Punishment… and most every crime was considered a Capital crime. Mercy was given sporadically, few and far between. She did her best to just not think about the future.

Well, she had. But then, on the third day into April, a new guard had been made to bring prisoner 319 her meager midday meal of bread and less than a half cup of water. The rations were better for those not imprisoned, she knew, as she had been one of them before. The prisoners were as good as dead, and she was sure it was only by the good graces her family had formerly been in with the Chancellor that she received any food at all.

He rapped once, hard, against the thick steel of the door and she didn't bother lifting her head as it opened, used to the guards. They usually just dropped her tray and were gone by the time she looked up. At the moment, she was working on a detailed design on the floor she kneeled on, her charcoal pencil gifted to her by her mother. It was the one thing, alongside her father's watch, that she had been allowed to keep with her in the cell. The ability to draw kept her sane, the practice a welcome distraction from reality, which sucked at best.

"Eat," this obviously new guard spoke. The others never normally had. She kept her eyes on the sketch below her, intent. "You might as well build up strength. You never know."

Now, she did look up at him. His dark gaze was on her, but when her blue eyes found it, the guard's eyes flitted away. "Why should I?" She didn't like to be so rude to them, afraid they'd tell Vice Chancellor Kane and have her punished further, but it was easier not to talk back when they didn't talk to _her_ in the first place. "All I do is sit in here anyway."

"You're lucky to be given any rations at all," the guard snapped. "There's plenty of other people in the Colony that need it more than the Delinquents here in lockup do."

"I'm sorry," Clarke said, in a tone that suggested she wasn't very sorry at all. "I wasn't aware that you knew my life story, cadet."

The guard licked his lips as an irritated smile appeared, but only for so brief a moment that she was sure she'd imagined it. "Maybe. But gossip does spread quickly, despite what those in charge do to keep it under wraps." The girl looked at him, a twinge of surprise working its way onto her face. "So, I actually do know a good deal of your life story, Clarke Griffin."

"Are you going to leave any time soon?"

The guard shrugged, nonchalantly careless. "Sure. Your cell, your rules. But I'm the guard for you now; everyone else got sick of you. I guess they figured they could sic the new guy on 319." Clarke rolled her eyes and went back to drawing. "Neither of us are in a winning situation here, Princess. Just eat your meal. You aren't doing yourself any favors, and it doesn't hurt any of us out there, despite what you may think about this selfless protest of yours."

Clarke refused to look up again until the sound of the heavy door shutting met her ears. Was it stupid to hope that he wouldn't come back? Her eyes fell back down to the stone floor. Of course it was. They always did. They always came back.

Everyone, except for her father.

* * *

Clarke's next meal was set for the following afternoon, as usual. After ten months of eating only a lunch, Clarke had grown used to the empty feeling in her stomach, so used to it that it no longer bothered her at all. That day, Clarke was propped against the dreary grey wall that served as a headboard to her cot bed. It wasn't home, but 'home' wouldn't have been too cozy either, if she were being honest, not after everything.

Her eyes bore holes into the wall some feet away, her knees drawn up around which her hands clasped loosely. Days went by either this way or passed peacefully through art. No matter which, life wasn't too exciting. It never really had been, though. But it had been her life, and she had loved it.

He entered today without knocking. It wasn't like she could be doing anything too indecent in a cold prison cell. "Bon appétit," he said dryly.

"Thanks a million," Clarke muttered back, her head falling back against the cement wall. On it was a drawing of a plant, done by her father. If she closed her eyes, she could see the way his hand glided so easily with a pen on paper, his face turning to meet hers with a childlike smile. Like him, Clarke was left-handed. Just another way she had felt connected to him throughout her young life.

"Not drawing today, I see."

Clarke looked at him, then. A mocking smile came onto her lips. "That's good. When you couldn't see me ignoring you yesterday I was worried that you were blind."

"Cruel joke," the guard replied smoothly, his smirk infuriating.

"Ten months of confinement after watching her father Floated will do that to a girl," Clarke told him, her voice as cold as she could muster while the memory of her father's execution played behind her eyelids, as it did most nights.

The young man's joking expression fell, just slightly, at Clarke's words. The satisfaction she had expected to feel was not enough to make her horrific loop cease.

"I'm sorry about your father," he told her, sincere. It was enough to cause a genuine thread of surprise to betray itself in her eyes and the softened set of her mouth. "Did you choose to watch?"

"Yes." Clarke swallowed. "I had to." She couldn't bring herself to explain, stuck between feeling morbid and loyal.

But he nodded. "I understand. My mother was Floated a few years back… My sister wasn't allowed to go, but I did." Clarke couldn't understand why this guard was telling her these things–unable to believe also he had a _sister_ –but she couldn't look away from his strangely captivating expression of remembrance either. "It was one of the hardest moments of my life. And trust me, there've been a lot."

After a second of his staring at the ground, the guard seemed to realize for what exactly he had been tasked to do. He lifted the tray. "Eat." He walked over to the cot, and Clarke, immediately disgusted with herself, shriveled back against the wall. He slowed down. A touch of hurt flashed across his tan, freckled face, as though the idea that he would try anything against her was a legitimate affront to his character. A character of which Clarke had, to her credit, met just the day before.

"Hey. I'm not going to do anything to you." He looked at Clarke, genuine, until she slowly nodded. He set the tray onto her sheet and then stepped back, his hands behind him. "Tomorrow, then."

And he left.

This time, Clarke didn't feel compelled to wish him out of her life. Perhaps he wouldn't be so bad, after all.

* * *

When the guard didn't return the next day, Clarke nearly asked the newest what had happened. But she held back, seated Indian-style on her bed and eyes glued to the sketch she had begun on the wall in front of her. She had left the intricate drawing on the floor for another time; she had nowhere else to go any time soon. But she did wonder what had happened to the other guard, the oddly kinder one, and if he would be back. Maybe, like the traitorous Wells and most others in her life, the guard had grown bored of her.

* * *

Clarke's question was answered the following afternoon when he appeared at her door for the third time. He wasn't wearing his guard's hat, though otherwise suited up, and his hair was gelled so perfectly that Clarke wanted to laugh. Even not having known him very long, she knew it would look far better ungroomed.

In that moment, she realized she didn't even know his name.

"Hey," the nameless guard said.

 _Where have you been?_ "Got sick of me already?" Clarke asked, eyes focused on the drawing on the floor.

"No," he said without hesitation. Clarke paused, but didn't look up. "I just got caught up with some stuff. Personal stuff. Had to take a day for myself and my sister."

"There you go again with that word. _Sister_." Clarke tilted her head as she turned her pretty eyes up to him. "How is that even possible?"

"My having a sister?" The Guard smiled a little, apparently used to such speculation. "It happened as most pregnancies do–"

"You know what I mean."

His playful expression was shoved away by evidently painful memories, and Clarke studied his face during the second-long change. "I do. It was a fault on my mother's part. But Octavia… She isn't a mistake. She's my family." He looked at her, then. "That's it."

"I had a family," Clarke said, her eyes distant. "Great parents, all these friends–a _best_ friend…" She trailed off, her somewhat nostalgic smile becoming twisted into a scowl. "But that's over now. Because, _now_ , I have a dank cell that belonged to my father before his trial and inevitable execution. Now I have only myself, this pencil, and my thoughts to keep me company."

"I have my empty quarters," the guard said. "Full of memories of my mother and sister. I was helpless to save either of them."

"But your sister is alive."

"She is," he agreed. "Locked up in here like you, with the other Delinquents, just for being born."

Clarke dropped her eyes. "You think it's a crime for your sister to be locked up 'just for being born'?" she asked. "Isn't that what happened to me? I was born to a scientist and engineer named Jake Griffin who, because he discovered a fatal flaw in this stupid spacecraft's system and knew that the people had a right to be told about it, was murdered." Clarke stared at the guard. "And I knew, without a doubt, that I needed to help him in any way I could, and that got me put in here, so my tongue could be as good as cut out." Unable to meet her eyes, the guard looked away, but Clarke was unrelenting. "So tell me: is what happened to me any different? Any more justified?"

"We shouldn't even be talking like this," the guard said in a quiet voice tinged with warning.

"What's it matter? In little more than a month, I'll be executed for what they call treason." Clarke's voice was bitter, but her eyes were welling with tears at the thought of being Floated. Part of her was terrified, while the other yearned to feel what her father had in his final moments. It couldn't have been peace. "I'll be dead anyway." Her fair head dropped as salty tears slipped from her flushed cheeks onto the charcoal drawing. Her tears had more taste than her everyday meal.

The guard, after only a second of hesitance, came forward and knelt beside Clarke. Tentatively, he set his arm around Clarke to keep her steady, but instead of this, his touch had the exact opposite effect. Clarke hadn't been held for months–she melted into his arms like a drowned paper doll.

He was taken aback, but once a moment of this had passed, his other arm came to hold her shaking form tightly against him. He had never cared about anyone outside of Octavia before. She knew him better than anyone, and was all he needed. But now, with this girl crying into his chest as though he were the only source of light in this dark world, he wasn't so sure.

* * *

That was the day that started it all, so to speak. From it on, the guard brought prisoner 319 her meal as though nothing had changed. A couple 'visits' after the day she had cried, Clarke finally remembered to ask his name. His reply: Bellamy Blake. A beautiful name for a beautiful boy. The universe was funny when it wanted to be.

She was drawing again, as was the usual, working on the floor. She was intent, and so was Bellamy. But his eyes were on Clarke, not the piece of art. He liked to watch her move, as strange is it may sound; just the delicacy of her touch to the cold floor, as though it were so much more, a canvas built only for her hand. His own lips curled into a grin when he noticed the occasional smile that appeared on hers, and he couldn't help it. He had never met anyone that could be so intense and yet so beautiful all at once. Not before Clarke.

"You aren't at all what I was expecting," he found himself murmuring to her.

Her eyes came to meet his, a small grin visible. "I hope that's a good thing."

"Well, in all honesty, I was sure you were just another rich kid getting a slap on the wrist." Clarke stared at him. "Hey, I'm sorry, but you're closest friend is Wells Jaha. Can't blame me."

"Was."

"What?"

"My closest friend _was_ Wells Jaha," Clarke clarified, drawing again. "He betrayed me."

"Everyone deserves a second chance."

Clarke lifted her eyebrows at Bellamy. "Do you honestly believe that?"

"Depends on the circumstance, but everyone's done something they aren't too proud of, I think," Bellamy said.

Clarke shrugged. "So you never told me why you wanted to become a guard."

"A boring story."

"Doubtful."

"Well, I'm hoping I can work my way up the ranks and help my sister."

"Do you think that'll work?"

Bellamy shoved his hair back. He had taken Clarke's advice; it wasn't quite so quaffed these days. "I have no idea," he told her honestly. "But I have to hope. Otherwise, what's the point?"

"Of what? Living?"

"Yeah. It'd all be so… bleak."

"You're talking to the girl in Confinement, cadet."

Bellamy grimaced in that way he had that somehow made the look of awkward regret seem like a smirk of amusement. "Sorry, Princess."

"Whatever. You get used to it after a while, I guess."

"I am sorry," he repeated. "That you have to be in here."

"Yeah, well… You don't." Clarke set down her pencil and looked at him. "You should go."

"Clarke…"

"Bellamy, I'm okay," she assured him. She meant it, mostly. "You didn't hurt my feelings; I just don't need you getting in trouble for staying in here too long with me."

After a second, Bellamy nodded, knowing she was right, and got to his feet. "Okay," he said. "See you tomorrow? It'll have to be another quick day." Clarke let out a breath but allowed a small nod his way. Bellamy sighed and bent down, lifting her up along with him and into his arms so they stood in an embrace. "Hey," he murmured. "I know this isn't fair. Your only friend is a guard." Clarke tried to pull away from him, at that, but he chuckled and held her. "But that at least means we get to see each other every day. Does it matter for how long?"

Clarke, against his now-familiar chest, shook her head. "I'm just… I'm alone in here." Bellamy's heart ached for her, but he had no way to make it any better for either of them.

"I know," he said, his voice soft. "And I feel alone out there. But in a couple days, I'll be able to hang out here a bit longer, okay?"

"Yeah."

Bellamy dropped a quick kiss to the top of Clarke's head and then released her, with some difficulty, and immediately missed the warmth of her body. She felt the same, resisting the urge to wrap her arms around her waist to replace his. "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

* * *

Sometimes he didn't come very day, and Clarke knew that. He stayed away to avoid suspicion, but after a couple of weeks, it had become habit to tell her when he would be gone the afternoon before then, so as not to worry her. But it was the sixth day of a new month, and Bellamy hadn't stopped by since the second. Clarke tried not to think too much on it; she was sure he had to have good reason.

Clarke was drawing again. She worked presently and persistently at a flower she'd seen once in an ancient Biology textbook, something called a sunflower. It was Clarke's favorite, because it reminded her of the giant burning ball of gas that the Ark shared space with. Maybe one day she'd feel its warmth. It had always been a dream of hers and Wells'. Now it was all so mixed up.

She shook her head, dropping it, eyes closed. With a breath in, Clarke lifted the pencil. She began again, trying to focus her thoughts. But they wouldn't cooperate, returning always to Bellamy. Dependable, sturdy Bellamy. Sweet, compassionate Bell'. He'd be back. He had to come back. Didn't he?

He did, though it wasn't midday at his arrival. It was around five in the evening, and the look on his face made Clarke slow down; she had jumped up as he'd barreled through the door. Instead of questioning why he wasn't at the Remembrance Ceremony, Clarke's eyebrows knitted together in concerned confusion.

"Bellamy? What's going on?" she asked him.

His tanned skin was unusually flushed, eyes wide as he tried to breathe normally. "Clarke, there's been–I'm not exactly sure how it's happened–"

Clarke hurried forward and grabbed his slender fingers in her own, eyes focused up at him through her worry. "Tell me what's going on."

"I'm not sure." Bellamy took his hand back in order to scrub both through his dark hair. "I've just heard rumors–of what the Council has been planning, for I don't know how long. It's bad, Clarke–"

"Then tell me what it is!"

He took her by the arm to the cot, sitting her down next to him. "Clarke, it's–there's been a breach in the oxygen system on the ship. That on top of what your father discovered–it's falling apart. We have a few weeks of air left the way we're going, and then it's over."

"So what are you saying?"

"They've decided to send a dropship down to Earth, Clarke." She looked at him, blank. "It'll have the 100 Delinquents on board. You're going to Earth."

"But–that isn't possible," Clarke managed to sputter. "That's ridiculous, Bellamy; they have no idea if it's even safe enough to survive–"

"I know that. Why do you think I'm–" Bellamy breathed out harshly, shaking his head. "You and O are going to Earth, unless I figure out a way to stop it."

"Bellamy, what could you possibly do?" Clarke said. "There's no way I'd let you do anything stupid–"

"Then it's a good thing you don't give the orders."

Clarke stood up and stared him down, face reddening. "It's about time you used the guard line."

"Clarke, listen to me," Bellamy pleaded, standing. "I can't just let you go to Earth with a bunch of criminals. I'll figure out some way–something–"

Before he could finish his desperate thought, a siren began to whirl around their ears, the normally dull light in the corner of the ceiling now glaringly red. The alarms throughout the hallways reached the cell as well, a deafening symphony.

"What's going on?" Clarke nearly shouted above the din.

"I don't–"

"ALL GUARDS TO EDEN HALL," a voice suddenly shouted over the loudspeakers. Both Bellamy and Clarke's heads shot up at the sound, eyes pulled wide open. "ALL GUARDS TO EDEN HALL."

"What the hell is happening around here?" Bellamy muttered, partly to himself.

"I have no idea," Clarke said, "but doesn't _all guards_ count you too?"

Bellamy's incredulous eyes fell to her face, as though the suggestion were nothing short of insane. "You're kidding, right? You think I'd leave you right now?"

"You want to protect me?" Clarke demanded. "I can't get any safer in here, Bell'. Go do your job, or else we're both as good as Floated." When he didn't move, Clarke gave him a shove, though it was like pushing at a brick wall. " _Go_." He nodded reluctantly and stepped back, but then she grabbed at his arm, clutching it and his hand in her own. "Don't forget about me here, Bellamy. Please." She somehow kept her voice from cracking, but Bellamy swallowed.

"I won't lose you, Clarke." He searched her face. "I swear." He pressed a kiss to her cheek, the skin burning where his lips touched, before running out of the cell.

Clarke stood frozen in the middle of the cold room, unsure of what to do. What now? And what could have possibly happened at the Ceremony?

* * *

Three days later, Clarke was distractedly thinking on her cot with the charcoal pencil twiddling uselessly in her fingers when the door burst open. Beyond relief, her mouth began to shape Bellamy's name, but it wasn't Bellamy. Two guards stood in his place, and neither looked particularly friendly.

"Prisoner 319, face the wall," the one burly guard ordered Clarke.

She scrambled to her feet, her face questioning. She couldn't help the fear that managed to seep its way into her eyes. "But I–What's happening?"

"Quiet. Arm out."

"What?" Clarke staggered away from the men. "No–it isn't–my birthday isn't for another month yet!" The guards lunged for her and, unable to avoid their obvious advantage of weight and general mammoth size, Clarke was restrained. Before she could even scream, a needle was plunged into her left arm, the pencil she hadn't even realized she'd still been clenching like a vice slipping from her weakening fist to the cement floor.

At least she had nearly finished her sketch.

* * *

Clarke awoke for a brief moment in a spacecraft, evidently the dropship. Bellamy had been right. And he hadn't been able to stop it. She hadn't truly believed he could have, but the fact that all she knew and loved was going to be left behind made her chest ache with a pain that made Clarke catch her breath in shallow bursts.

They weren't moving; the others were only just now wakening. Clarke grabbed at her buckles, but there were so many of them while so few lights on the dropship to see by.

Just as she managed to rip one open, the hum of the machine came to life and Clarke frantically began to tear at her belts, working her fingers at the buckles. She had to get off; she had to get back.

Back to her prison cell, unavoidable and sure Floatation. Was that any better than being blown up in space? The only difference was that here, she would be surrounded by complete strangers.

Before Clarke could make up her mind, the dropship's couple of lights went out, pitching Clarke into utter nothingness, and then they were on their way. She was only able to remain awake for another minute, and suddenly they were thrown into the atmosphere and her head was slammed against her seat, the world going dark and starry. It wasn't much of a change from the usual.

* * *

There was smoke coming from someplace, and that was what woke Clarke some unknown amount of time later. It could have been hours, it could have been seconds, for all she knew. What Clarke did know was that the other Delinquents were awake as well, the swell of chatter increasing as they grappled for their bearings, yelling for friends and so on.

The lights were flickering on, and Clarke immediately returned to freeing herself. Her calloused fingers were shaking, and her head hurt. She fought to keep it clear, at least until she could get out of this dropship. But then what? Would they survive even five minutes on the land before dying of exposure to so much concentrated radiation?

Clarke stood, flexing her muscles. Everything seemed to be in working order, good news after only bad for those past few days. Maybe she could find Bellamy's sister, Octavia. Even simply thinking his name made Clarke's already twisting stomach turn. She'd never see him again, or her mother. How many people would she be forced to lose?

She was looking around, unsure of what to do. There were so many teenagers just milling about, catching up with friends, wondering aloud what the hell was going to be done, but above all of that, Clarke could have sworn she heard something else. A name. But that wasn't possible. No way.

Despite her brain telling her to let it go, that she was losing it after that bump on the way down, Clarke shoved her way through the others, throwing a couple pardons behind her but without much legitimate care. She climbed the steel ladder down to the main level, her eyes scanning the crowd of heads. The dropship's door was already open; someone had been foolish enough to go out already? Clarke wouldn't be surprised if they broke out in pus-filled boils. Even knowing this, she herself made it out the door, and could hardly believe her eyes.

The Earth was somehow more beautiful than she had ever imagined. So many times Clarke had pictured the sun's warmth on her face as she lay beneath a tree in what the ancients had called the season of autumn, the tempered colors swirling around her. The scent of flowers and sound of birdsong all around, Clarke was free from space life. But now, in this moment, she really _was_.

The sky was impossibly blue, not a cloud in sight, and the humongous trees swayed their branches in the wind as though in greeting to the people that had arrived from above. Clarke knew, as she inhaled the biggest, purest breath she had ever had the pleasure of taking, that this moment would last forever in her mind.

And so would the next.

Because she had been right about the name she'd thought she had heard.

"Clarke?"

She spun to see him. There he was, standing across the clearing. His dark hair shone beneath the light of the sun, his guard's uniform, for whatever reason stained with some dark substance, so familiar that Clarke nearly broke down on the spot. Instead, she choked out his name, and then ran to him. Her arms flung themselves around his neck as her body slammed against his, again murmuring the name she thought she'd never have reason to speak after leaving the Ark. Her face in his chest, Clarke felt her tears slip onto his uniform.

"Hey, Princess," Bellamy whispered breathlessly into her ear, holding her so tightly that Clarke almost couldn't breathe. But she didn't even care.

"Bellamy," she repeated. "How are you here?" And then she took notice of the girl beside him, a beautiful girl with hair as dark as Bellamy's, but eyes blue like crystalline water. "Octavia?"

"Been talking about me, big brother?" Octavia grinned, her smirk much the same as Bellamy's. He smiled, and Clarke could swear that he had never looked more at peace, despite everything.

He shook his head and took hold of Clarke's elbow, leading her some feet away from his sister and lowering his voice. "Look, Clarke–"

"No, just–no bad news, please," she cut him off, holding his hands in disbelief. "I can't believe this is happening."

"But you need to know what I did in order to get on the dropship with you." He took a breath, but Clarke lifted her hand to his cheek, the warmth sending shivers up the nerves of her arm.

"Bellamy. We may or may not be slowly dying of radiation poisoning, but we have at least a few hours," Clarke said. Bellamy smiled, just a little. "So shut up, and kiss me."

Bellamy looked at her, and Clarke was almost sure that he wouldn't, but then he was suddenly holding her close, his lips against hers like they belonged there, and all she could smell was his skin, all she could feel was the pressure of his touch. She was on fire.

"I thought you didn't take orders," she whispered when he had held her away from him, but only slightly. Bellamy's soft laughter reverberated into Clarke, and she couldn't help but smile.

"And I thought you were just another rich girl," Bellamy replied, close enough that Clarke could feel his lips move against her cheek. "I guess we've both been pretty _blind_."

Doubling over with laughter, the kind that was born from something so ridiculous it seemed to last forever, Clarke couldn't imagine a better welcome to Earth. "Never make a joke again," she managed to say, and he wrapped her up into his arms once again, a large smile on his lips.

"Whatever the hell you want, Princess."

And he kissed her. He tasted like joy, and joy tasted better on Earth.


End file.
